Yarns and fibers formed from polyolefins can offer many desirable characteristics. For example, they can possess good tactile qualities such as hand feel, they can be resistant to degradation and erosion, and the raw materials can be easy to obtain as well as fairly inexpensive. As such, monofilament fibers as well as multifilament yarns have been formed from various polyolefins such as polypropylene. While the development of monofilament polyolefin fibers that have high modulus and high tenacity has been achieved, the ability to produce high modulus, high tenacity multifilament yarns of similar materials has not been as successful. As such, there remains room for improvement and variation within the art.
Previous polyolefin fibers have been produced through typical spinning procedures, primarily solution-spun methods, that result in polyolefin fibers having relatively large amounts of solvents present therein that dilute the overall polyolefin constituency. These typical spinning procedures also take into account monofilament-type polymers wherein the target fibers are produced from a sole spinneret. Multifilament fibers are produced from a plurality of spinnerets, to the contrary, and require a capability of interaction between the individual components to form a strong, effective fiber of multiple filaments. Additionally, such typical polyolefin fibers are produced with drawing subsequent to spinning production, albeit at draw ratios that permit the filaments to extend to very long lengths in order to provide very thin fibers thereof; there have been no disclosures or teachings of past polyolefin fiber producing methods wherein the draw ratio exceeds a limited number, for instance from 1 to about 4.